This year, some of my favorite recent shows — like Succession and Barry — have come to an end. Both of their final seasons were tremendous, and they are both arguably the best seasons of their series. Since those shows have ended, I thought it would be fitting to fill you in on my thoughts on four other series that ended this year. Two of these are limited series, and the remaining two are ongoing series. Are any of them worth your time? Well, let’s have a look.
F.A.Q.
- What are Additional Bite-Sized Reviews?
– My monthly movie and television catch-up review series ‘Additional Bite-Sized Reviews‘ is an evolution of the Overview-article section previously titled ‘What I Didn’t Write About.’ I was originally inspired by film critic Peter Sobczynski’s article series ‘Films I Neglected to Review,’ wherein he writes short, or brief, reviews of films that he hasn’t had the time to write full reviews about. Therefore, in articles such as this one, I will provide my readers with my thoughts on select new films, new shows, or even classics that I feel like giving my thoughts on, even though I don’t have the time to dedicate thorough reviews to them. - Why do the bite-sized reviews not include either a letter grade or a review score?
– In my full and thorough reviews, I like to score or grade what I watch. But since these reviews aren’t as detailed, I think it is fairer to the films and shows to simply just decide whether or not to recommend them. I guess you could say this is the only type of review that is basically ‘scored’ with the classic thumbs-up/thumbs-down-method on my site, though sometimes my recommendation answer comes with a caveat.
Servant: Season Four | Series | Created by Tony Basgallop | Release Year: 2023 | Season Length: 10 Episodes | Seen on: Apple TV+ | Recommended?: Only if you need closure from the first three seasons.
I recently realized that I had never actually written about the third season of Servant. It must’ve slipped my mind last year. I apologize for that. Tony Basgallop’s horror show (which is produced by M. Night Shyamalan, who has also directed episodes of the show every once in a while) has always been about a mother’s repressed trauma involving the newborn she lost, about the mysterious babysitter they hire to take care of the reborn doll that the mother thinks is real, and about how the babysitter is suddenly able to bring it to life. And, frankly, it has kept me interested throughout the show. I really enjoyed the first season, and, while the second season didn’t work as well for me, the show always had its hooks in me.
Since that second season, I have struggled with how I felt the show just kept stringing you along, as it delayed its reveals over and over again. Frankly, this aspect made me struggle with the third season especially. That was probably the season that had me lose my patience with the show. But when I started to watch the fourth and final season, I was hopeful that now we would finally get to see what we had been waiting for since the very start.
This season it was clear that Leanne, the babysitter played very well by Nell Tiger Free, wasn’t just not trusted by the family, people were outright scared of her. A now paraplegic Dorothy, the mother played by Lauren Ambrose, now hated Leanne and wanted her out. This new dynamic reminded me a little bit of Rob Reiner’s Misery, and I thought it was an interesting way to go with the show. But my own problems with the show’s pacing persisted. Though I thought the first four episodes of the ten-episode season were somewhat decent, it felt like so little had actually happened. I have always said that this is probably a show best enjoyed when binge-watching it, as the thirty-minute episodes rarely have enough meat on the bone for you to not lose your patience.
Over the course of these four seasons, it often felt to me like the show was either standing in place never really moving forward, or merely moving forward gradually as it also repeated its own steps. Frankly, to me, it felt like the show crammed the meat of the entire season into the final three episodes. And there were portions of these episodes that were quite good as the series tried to land itself as a treatise on forgiveness, which makes sense given the repressed trauma that has always been a part of this show. But the execution didn’t work for me. The length of the episodes became a huge problem here, as the series finale felt like the tail-end of an episode rather than a complete episode. I also felt the way everything was tied up felt anticlimactic, as unresolved threads were left on the floor, groups of characters remained vaguely described throughout the show, and often these vaguely described elements were only used as visual symbolism and to create an atmosphere for a show that all too often moved at a glacial pace.
If there had been spent more energy on how to best structure the seasons, as well as a decision made to make the episodes longer, I think this is a show that could’ve been remembered more fondly. Ultimately, it is that side of the show’s execution that always felt lacking, because the acting was always entertaining and solid, just like how the actual story kept your interest. It is a shame that a show with such a great premise ultimately didn’t stick the landing almost entirely due to decisions related to pace, arc development, and structure.
Your Honor: Season Two | Series | Developed by Peter Moffat | Release Year: 2023 | Season Length: 10 Episodes | Seen on: HBO Max Denmark (A Showtime series in the U.S.) | Recommended?: No, unless you really liked the first season, but lower your expectations for the series finale.
Bryan Cranston is a phenomenal actor. Frankly, I started watching this show solely for him, and I went as far as to state in my brief review of the first season that I thought his turn in this series helped to solidify him as “his generation’s most memorable television ‘dad.’” However, I also noted that the first season hobbled across the finish line and that he was the primary reason for sticking with it as certain character decisions were sometimes rather questionable, to say the least. I’ll also go out and say that a part of me thought that the first season was going to be it — that it wasn’t going to return for a second season — that they had told their story and opted to end with a helluva heartbreaker for the main character, in spite of how clumsily done that ending might’ve been.
Some of my issues with the first season persisted in the second season, in which Cranston’s depressed and grief-stricken character is released from prison and pressured into working with someone who wants to take down the Baxter crime family from the inside. I still thought that the show pretty much only worked when Cranston was on screen, and it spent too much time away from him. It isn’t all bad, though. The show initially gets a lot out of a reveal that gives the main character something to live for, and, later in the season, I liked that the show tried to expand on what happened to the wife of Cranston’s character. Most of the time, though, it felt like they were almost trying to clumsily set up a really uninteresting spin-off series about the criminal underworld of the city, and, in broad strokes, I saw coming what was ultimately going to happen. Furthermore, the very ending of the season — which, I believe, is the ending of the series — was underwhelming and rushed, whereas the overall season-long plot was drawn out. It was a bit of a frustrating ending for me, as some plot threads were left dangling for no good reason.
So, while it has moments of greatness and a terrific cast (Stuhlbarg is always compelling) spearheaded by a strong Cranston performance, most of the season is just middle-of-the-road stuff that fails to justify the length of the season, and some people might say it doesn’t justify the entire season’s existence. I don’t think it is a bad season, but there were moments during the season when it felt like they only had enough material for two episodes or, frankly, a single feature film-length episode.
Love and Death | Series | Created by David E. Kelley | Release Year: 2023 | Season Length: 7 Episodes | Seen on: HBO Max | Recommended?: Yes.
From Big Little Lies-creator and TV vet David E. Kelley, Love and Death is a dramatization of the true story of the axe murder in Wylie, Texas in 1980. In the series, we follow along as housewife Candy Montgomery (played by Elizabeth Olsen) is accused of committing the murder of Betty Gore (played by Lily Rabe), the wife of Allan Gore (played by Jesse Plemons), who Candy Montgomery had had an extramarital affair with some time prior to Betty’s murder.
This is the only one of these reviews to actually be an outright recommendation. The strange thing about Love and Death is the fact that this true story (something that each and every episode makes sure to remind you that it is by having text spell it out on-screen) wasn’t just told this year as this HBO series, the very same story was also told last year as the Jessica Biel-led Hulu-series Candy. of which I believe I watched maybe two episodes when it was released in Disney+ in my region.
This won’t be a comparative review, as you will be able to find plenty of these online (and because I’ve only actually finished this show). The main reason why I have made sure to point the aforementioned fact out is that it has left me asking myself the question of why this HBO adaptation kept me interested when the Hulu series didn’t get me to come back (it’s not like Candy and Love and Death are that far apart when it comes to exactly how critically acclaimed they are or not).
All I can do is express what I like about this show. That starts with the style of it all. In spite of the subject matter, the show has this color palette that is unlike the humdrum toned-down visuals that you may expect from a true crime series. A stylized series, Love and Death has a great soundtrack, great production design, and moments of really zippy editing in the first episodes. Elizabeth Olsen’s performance is note-perfect, as she nails exactly what the show is going for with their complicated lead character — an anachronistic and stylish woman out-of-time limited and bored by the trappings of a housewife living. Plemons is also quite good as the passive lover who, like Olsen’s character, feels seen when away from his partner. One thing that didn’t really work for me was this addition of ghostly sounds to make it appear as if Plemons’ character is haunted by his wife. That said, there is a lot to love here.
The Last Thing He Told Me | Series | Developed by Laura Dave and Josh Singer | Release Year: 2023 | Season Length: 7 Episodes | Seen on: Apple TV+ | Recommended?: Not really. But maybe a tiny recommendation, if you are desperate for something remotely similar to Big Little Lies.
Based on the Laura Dave mystery novel of the same name, The Last Thing He Told Me follows Hannah (played by Jennifer Garner) after her husband, Owen (played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), disappears after his place of employment becomes involved in a newsworthy scandal. He leaves her a note asking her to protect her stepdaughter — his daughter — Bailey (played by Angourie Rice). But Hannah isn’t satisfied with just protecting Bailey. Together they decide to figure out exactly how much Owen has been hiding about himself and his and Bailey’s past.
With its strong cast, which also includes Aisha Tyler, Augusto Aguilera, Victor Garber, and David Morse, and its family-focused mystery-thriller narrative, this Apple TV+ limited series feels like an obvious comparison to Big Little Lies (it even also included a husband character played by a relatively high profile Scandinavian actor). It also has all the makings of a hit. But while the ingredients are there, the final product leaves something to be desired.
Frankly, I think this is the kind of limited series that doesn’t justify its running time but rather wastes it. Over the course of the seven episodes, the show will regularly show flashbacks often featuring Coster-Waldau and Garner to establish why Hannah would go through all this for her missing husband. I initially liked this because I was worried that Coster-Waldau would just be absent for most of the show. But even though it was nice to see Coster-Waldau regularly through these flashbacks, I must say that in spite of having these flashbacks, I never felt that I really understood all that much about Hannah. The characters feel thinly drawn, and I’m not just talking about the character whose identity is in question from minute one. Rice and Garner try hard to elevate the material, but their characters too often felt like archetypes (e.g. the teenager that doesn’t get along with her stepmother), to me. Furthermore, the show is just really slow-paced.
There are things to like about the show (and I really wanted to like Coster-Waldau’s latest series) such as its committed cast and the glossy look of the show, but the showrunners fail to utilize the running time that they have been allotted to get the most out of their narrative and their characters. It too often felt meandering, to me. It might be better to experience when binge-watched than watching it week-to-week, but, frankly, I think the resolution in the final episode is anticlimactic and unsatisfying. Plus, it fumbles it all in the very last moments due to a laughable fake beard and a final line that is somewhat difficult to understand if you’re not watching it with subtitles.
– Reviews Written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
I'm Jeffrey Rex 
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